Version Control Software

[CCM]

We are still using Visual Source Safe 2005 at our office for version control.   It is pretty unstable and painfully slow, especially across our VPN.  Is anyone here familiar with any decent, modern, open source version control software that is suitable for a small business?

I have read some reviews of Git, Subversion, and Mercurial, but I would like to hear from someone that has first hand knowledge.

[ChadTower]

I have been an admin for just about every enterprise scale version control platform out there.  Clearcase, Perforce, SourceSafe, Starteam, Subversion, Version Manager.  Systems as small as 5 users up to 2500 across multiple continents with active/active or passive/active mirroring.

If you tell us a little bit about the size of your userbase, how many locations, and what your budget is I can help you.

Oh, also what sort of applications you are looking to control, and whether or not you need any sort of issue tracking.

[CCM]

We are a small company, only 7 employees.  Only 4 of us will need to access version control...   We access it in the office as well as remotely thru our vpn.   

We develop custom web applications in both Java and .NET.  We use NetBeans and Visual Studio for development.  Issue tracking is not important.   We don't have much of a budget for this, I was hoping to find a good open source solution.

Thanks!

[spoot]

For only four of you I'd probably go with Subversion and TortiseSVN.  Or if your codebase is huge and/or you branch alot......GIT and TortisGIT.

[bleargh]

I switched all of our stuff over to Git a few years back, and haven't looked back.

Depending on whether the project I'm working on is open-source or not, I then end up using either GitHub or a private GitLab server to host the repositories.

W.r.t. the private GitLab server that I have, I host mine over at DigitalOcean.  Cheap cloud provider, and they've got a pre-canned GitLab server in their list of systems to build/provision.

On that thought... if anyone wants to try a GitLab server over at DigitalOcean, PM me for a referral code and it'll give you $10 credit when you sign up (which should be enough to set it up and try it out for a month w/o it costing you anything).

[Jimbo]

Git all the way for me.  Development team of 4, always creating/switching/merging branches - it's awesome, powerful yet simple and has increased our productivity no end from the svn (and before that cvs) days.

[ChadTower]

Git is one of the few that I haven't worked with but I do know some about it.  I hear good things but also that the distributed nature of the platform makes it hard for people who aren't native *NIX users to grab.

Subversion is a great option for your needs, I think.  It's free, the server installs in minutes, there are clients of all types for nearly all OS, and there are a billion great tutorials on Youtube.  There are easy clients for Eclipse and .NET IDEs that work very well. 

[Jimbo]

For a relatively light intro into how git works: -

http://tom.preston-werner.com/2009/05/19/the-git-parable.html

We use git on ubuntu, but one developer uses TortoiseGit on windows.  I must admit I hate TortoiseGit, and find the command line much simpler.

[ChadTower]

The Tortoise clients can be uncomfortable for people who are used to thick client apps or CLIs.  I see that all the time with new users. 

[bleargh]

Git is one of the few that I haven't worked with but I do know some about it.  I hear good things but also that the distributed nature of the platform makes it hard for people who aren't native *NIX users to grab.

I just treat Git like I would have treated SVN... one primary/central server that every pushes/pulls code from.  While it doesn't take advantage of the "distributed" nature of Git/Mercurial/etc, it does make things a whole lot simpler for people to wrap their heads around.

[CCM]

Thanks for the info, guys!    I will take a look at Subversion and Git.